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Re: Setting is Very Important in Opening of a Novel

If the question is about the opening of the 'Beach of Falesa', then you are right about religion. Religion pops up in the start, with the Papist/Baptist talk, but it doesn't strike me as central to the opening. In the 'Beach of Falesa', he starts with a paradise island, then quickly drags us into the characters, illnesses, conflicts, etc, in a whirl, taking us far from the paradise image, into a much more real and complex world in a few paragraphs, with mystery illnesses that kill overnight and a place where people don't live 'to windward' of the village, but no one knows why. This story begins 'in media res' (starts in the middle at the begining), so you are sucked in as you wnat to know more about this person, their station, where they been before, what they're going to be doing on the island, etc. Why does he need a wife? We are bombarded with bits and pieces- names, details. Religion isn't the major theme of the opening- there's an undercurrent, what did the missionaries do and why does he have to get married? The opening leaves us full of questions and wondering where we're going.

RC begins in a very different manner- again, it's a first person anrrative, but it doesn't launch into telling the story in the middle. he gives us his background, his family, his roots, why he went to sea, etc. Religion is more prominent here- not asking for blessing before boarding, the references to Jonah. But again, if the question is about the opening, I feel that RC is more about painting the picture of the person so that we can see what happens when they do end up stuck on an island. The world around him is painted in moe detail, so that we can see what happens when it is stripped away.

In the Beach, we see a complex society, where people of different races are white, where wives are commodities, where people have long pasts and grudges. In RC, we see a slower buidling up of details about a person so that we will see that person better when the setting changes so drastically.

Re: Setting is Very Important in Opening of a Novel

So religion mainly affects RC, we havent actually been given soo much info about the book just 1 page of the beginning of the Beach of Falesa and 2 pages on RC of the book when he has just landed on the island. So I see that I have to write about

how the reader is lured into reading the novel
characters affect on the book and how the authors life resembles the characters
when it was written and how that affects the way of writing
Main themes of the book
Writers attitude
And sentence structure

Re: Setting is Very Important in Opening of a Novel

If you only have one page, then concentrate on that. If you can deduce main themes from the text you have, that's fine. I think that, if you have been given RC landing on the island, then you should look at the descriptions of the islands in the two texts and compare them.

IN RC, you have someone discovering a new worlds- one where money has become worthless, where the values are different from those he had before. In the Beach, you have an experienced person moving to a new island, but with a very diffeent eye, and with people around him who know the area. I'd look at that. Two islands, one writer, but two different stories.

Re: Setting is Very Important in Opening of a Novel

Thanks for the money point you made I didnt look at it that way. We have been given 2 pages from the book where he is stranded on the island and he talks 1st about food shelter and protection from wild beasts and savages. If you know what I mean.

Re: Setting is Very Important in Opening of a Novel

Then you have answered the question. If you have been asked to look at two short extracts and comment on how their setting is important as opening to novels, then comment on that. You said you were given two extracts, not full texts, so I understand the task is to focus on the two extracts, rather than what your friends suggest. Also, in RC, the relationship between the individual and his environment, how RC struggles to build a world in unfamiliar territory, strikes me as a more important theme than religion.

The setting is where the book is set, and you say that you have looked at the description of the surroundings, so you have done what was asked.

PS, feel free to put your text up here or send it to me through private message if you want me to look at what you've done.